History of New Forest

About four kilometres north of Marske village, in an area of high moorland, Marske Beck splits into Throstle Gill and Shaw Beck. Beyond this it splits again into Skegdale Beck, Mosedale Beck, Arndale Beck and Rake Beck.  This area is known as “New Forest”, and historically farms in the area included Kexwith, Holgate, West House, Lummas House, Helwith and Kersey Green.  Today there are three or four working farms. New Forest is traversed by the minor road that begins in Marske as Cordilleras Lane and ends in Newsham. Arguably some of the farms in the area are the most remote in North Yorkshire. The area is dominanted by high value heather moorland and peat. The land is home to a rich diversity of birds, insects and vegetation; it serves as a carbon sink. It is home to the rugged Swaledale breed of sheep that thrive here.

Ancient links to Arkengarthdale and Ravensworth

New Forest is now part of the “Marske and New Forest Parish”. New Forest was a “Township” and part of Kirkby Ravensworth until 1866. Geographically it is also close to Arkengarthdale, and has had historical links in that direction as well¹.  Unlike Marske, Ravensworth was mentioned in the Domesday Book, although it seems unlikely that that related to any habitation in what is now New Forest ². 

Before 1171, and after the conquest, the forestry (hunting rights) of New Forest and Arkengarthdale were granted from the Earl of Richmond (“Conan the Little” – the reputed builder of the keep of Richmond Castle) to the ancestors of the Fitz Hughs¹.  The Fitz Hughs were Lords of the Manor of Ravensworth.  Their stronghold was Ravensworth Castle, a castle linked in the defence of the North with Richmond Castle. (The history of Richmond and Marske during this era is recorded here.)

The perils of non-church-goers

Perhaps the first recorded story in New Forest is from 1289.  John Fraunceys of Gayles liked to turn his back on the church on Sundays and used to go wandering over hill and dale¹.  One Sunday his wanderings took him further than usual to a remote place, Frankinshawe How, part of Holgate Moor. The wild mountainous solitude of the place was inhabited by the “full Powers of the Air”, specifically dwarfs that were facially deformed and who simulated the habit of an abbot.  The dwarfs mocked him and then flew away.  He was so bewitched by this ordeal that he was compelled to try to fly like the dwarves.  For eight days he took to his bed and struggled with trying to fly like them (this was seven centuries before Wilbur and Orville Wright after all).  So tormented was he with his failure to fly that he made a full confession, was released from the desire to fly, and presumably became a devout churchgoer for the rest of his life. 

Land ownership and common land in New Forest

The pattern of land ownership in New Forest is very different from that around Marske to the south. The first records of the open common land in New Forest being enclosed (as “intakes”) date from 1604¹.  Common land is land over which commoners, linked to the local farms, have statutory registered rights over the land, regardless of its ultimate ownership³.  Gradually in England commons have been “enclosed” into discrete fields with commoners’ rights being extinguished⁴.  Arkengarthdale Common is the only area of common land remaining in the Marske area.  At nearly 6000 acres it is the largest area of common land in North Yorkshire.  In total there are over 600 areas of common land in North Yorkshire, each with their own specific rights drawn up historically to define how they can be used⁵. The commoners’ rights on Arkengarthdale common include rights to graze specified numbers of sheep or cows. More generally in England commoners’ rights might also include other things such as the right to dig peat, or to collect firewood. 

In 1628 Arkengarthdale was sold by Charles I to the citizens of London.  In 1656, during the time of the Commonwealth (i.e., before the restoration of the monarchy and after the civil war), Arkengarthdale, including New Forest, was sold to Dr John Bathurst. John Bathurst was physician to Oliver Cromwell, and owner of Clints Hall.  John Bathurst sought to change rights that had been granted to tenant farmers by Queen Elizabeth I in 1590.  He took a heavy-handed approach to making these changes and threatened to send quarrelsome tenants to Ireland, Barbados or Virginia.  Notwithstanding this episode he founded a school at Helwith in 1659 for the children and tenant farmers of New Forest⁶. After his death, ownership of Arkengarthdale passed onto Charles Bathurst (of “CB Inn” fame).  Thereafter the land was passed to the three daughters of Charles Bathurst, albeit that their interests were formally managed initially by their husbands (family names included Turner, Sleigh and Forster)¹. 

Changes in the nineteenth century estates

In early nineteenth century the lands of Arkengarthdale, New Forest and Hope were bought from the Bathurst descendants by George Brown (a London Banker), and his brother-in-law the Reverend John Gilpin of Stockton⁷.  (As an aside the Reverend John Gilpin had also bought Sedbury Hall in 1826 from James Henry D’Arcy Hutton (1796-1843), who was the father of John Timothy D’Arcy Hutton I (1822-1874) the head of the Hutton family at Marske Hall later in his life⁸.) George Gilpin Brown was the Lord of the Manor (“Lord of Arkendale”) until his death in 1889.  The family residence on the estate was Scar House, just north of Langthwaite in Arkengarthdale, which was built in 1845⁷.  George Gilpin Brown was succeeded by his son George Thomas Gilpin Brown who died in 1918. 

Farm tenants in the nineteenth century

The Lord of the Manor in the New Forest area did not have the near-complete control of the land that the Hutton family had in Marske.  The tithe records from 1847 for the “Township” of New Forest show a more varied land ownership pattern than in Marske, and in that respect New Forest was more like most of Upper Swaledale⁹.  The high moorland of Hallgate (now “Holgate”) Pasture, Hallgate Moor and Kexwith Moor (totalling nearly 2500 acres) was owned by the Lords of Arkendale, although these lands were Commons.  In contrast the sides of the deeply incised valleys were owned by a number of smaller landowners including James Hutchinson and Leonard Spenceley.  These lands were enclosed as fields of typically of 1 to 5 acres, and half a dozen tenant farmers rented holdings of up to 30 acres from these landlords.  Typical holdings included land stretching in strips from the valley bottom to the higher pasture (see map below). This strip pattern created some variety in the nature of the grazing land available to the farmer. Swaledale sheep are known for their inclination to “heft” towards higher moorland – so may be these strips up the hillside made sense to the sheep as well! 

As noted above John Bathurst had funded a school in 1659 at Helwith. The first Ordnance Survey map of the area, two hundred years later in 1854 shows the endowed free school at Helwith. In later maps surveyed from 1892 to 1927 this same building is a “Mission Room”. Below the school in Helwith is a long barn, with a datestone bearing the inscription “I.H. 1842” – it is speculated that this refers to either James Hutchinson, one of the local landowners, or one of his relatives.

A family leave for America

One small landowner of 6 acres named on the tithe maps above is a James March. The March family had farmed at nearby Schoolmaster Pasture, and also had earned a living from the lead mines at Hurst. Margaret March married a Thomas White, who had been brought up at Mosedale Riggs Farm opposite Kexwith. A local story also relates that the family constructed a new wall across part of Moresdale Ridge on common land, which the other commoners promptly dismantled⁵. In around the 1840s Margaret and Thomas, with other family members, emigrated to Amerca. A son born on their journey across the Atlantic was given the middle name “Ocean”. They first stopped in the aptly named town of Galena in Illinois, and then settled in the even more aptly named place of New Diggins in Wisconsin territory¹⁰. They took to Wisconsin their Swaledale knowledge of lead mining and constructed buildings for dressing ores there (the process of washing out non-ore particles), perhaps similar to those on Shaw Beck near Helwith.

The present day descendents of the March and White families have copies of letters sent back to Yorkshire from New Diggins in 1844/5. With thanks to them the letters reveal the newly settled immigrants extolling the virtues of a free country where newcomers are treated well, the hay crop is good, land is freely available at low cost, and the variety of crops grown includes pumpkins and melons. The letters also gave practical tips to the remaining family members in Swaledale on how to prepare for their future ocean voyages. Men had to wear caps on the ship. Don’t buy food in Liverpool as it’ll be expensive: take your own bacon, butter, jam and cheese. Bring your own pots and pans for cooking on the ship, and try to avoid doing the cooking yourself as your children’s clothes will get covered in smoke and grime. Children should come in new clogs and boots, as the sense is they’d be better than anything available in New Diggins¹¹. Such stories of lead miners from Swaledale emigrating to lead mines in the Upper Mississippi Valley in the nineteenth century were repeated many times in the dale.

Emigration from Swaledale to North America

The path taken by the March and White families (above) to the Upper Mississippi Valley was one taken by many others from Swaledale and Arkengarthdale in the mid-nineteenth century¹².  Marske graveyard also records the life of a William Coates, who emigrated from Marske and was buried at Scales Mound, Illinois, in 1854, aged 30.

As the price of lead fell from £27/ton in 1825 to £13/ton in 1832 those who depended on mining for their income (or to supplement their farming income) began to think of leaving.  Poverty worsened.  In Muker parish for example the relief bill reached £1000 in 1831¹², a very considerable sum (although in contrast Marske was much less dependent on mining and the costs of poor relief would have been a fraction of this).  Over a period of 20 to 30 years there was an exodus from Swaledale to the mills of Lancashire, coalfields of South Yorkshire, or for newer pastures in North America.

A concentration of Swaledale folk gravitated towards the tri-state area where Wisconsin, Iowa and Illinois meet in the Upper Mississippi Valley.  The area was rich in lead deposits, and was the site of the first major “mineral rush” in the US¹³.  Over a period up to the 1840s European settlers had driven out native American tribes from this area, including the Ho-Chunks or Winnebagos¹⁴. A consequence of this was large areas of undeveloped farm land that the new Swaledale emigrants found attractive.

The new towns of Galena¹³, Lead Mine, Mineral Point and New Diggings became mining centres where the Swaledale emigrants gravitated. As well as taking up mining, a number of the Swaledale families also used their expertise to set up lead smelters.  But the stories told by those leaving Swaledale also tell of those families setting up new farms, as much as they became miners¹⁵. 

Ships, aeroplanes and electricity

After George Thomas Gilpin Brown’s death in 1918, Lt-Col Guy Greville Wilson, a ship-owner from Hull took over the Arkengarthdale Estate⁷.  With uncomfortable parallels to contemporary scandals, he had been known for acquiring fallen women for his friend the Prince of Wales (who became Edward VII).  In 1930, and to address straightened financial circumstances, he sold many of the tenanted farms on the Arkengarthdale Estate¹⁶.  Probably at this time that part of the estate covering Holgate Moor and Holgate Pasture was sold to the Milbank family of the nearby Barningham Estate. By the mid-1930s Guy Wilson’s debts had fully caught up with him and he was also forced to sell the remainder of the estate as well as Scar House.

Wilson was the succeeded as owner of Arkengarthdale Estate by Sir Thomas Sopwith⁷.  Ironically Sir Thomas’s father was a civil engineer who had been in charge of the Spanish Lead Mines Company. Cheaper lead from Spain in the nineteenth century was one of the causes of the decline of lead mining in Swaledale and Arkengarthdale.  Sopwith’s interests were elsewhere though, and his large inheritance enabled him to create the company that built the most successful World War I British aeroplane, the Sopwith Camel, as well as a life of adventure and sport including ice hockey, motoring and ballooning.  Both Sopwith, and Wilson before him, primarily visited the Estate to take part in annual grouse shooting.  Prince Charles (now King Charles III) remembers shooting grouse on Kexwith Moor with “Tommy” Sopwith in the 1970s⁵. Sir Thomas died in 1989¹⁷. 

At some point, probably at the time of Thomas Sopwith’s death, the Arkengarthdale Estate was split into two. The Duke of Norfolk now owns the western part of the Arkengarthdale Estate and continues to use it for shooting⁷. The eastern part of the Estate, which includes New Forest, is now owned by the East Arkengarthdale Limited whose directors include members of the Swedish Torstenson family¹⁸, who also use the land for grouse shooting.  Grouse butts are arranged across most of the moorland. Rights over the common land accommodate both sheep farming and grouse shooting.

Some brief details of an air crash on the moors just north of New Forest are included in the pages on Marske and World War II.

The New Forest area was one of the last areas locally to be connected to the National Grid in the 1962. Prior to this, Kexwith Farm for example, had had its own generator as part of what would today be called a “hydro scheme”⁵.

New Forest today

As a parish New Forest Parish is now grouped with Marske¹⁹. One member of the full Parish Council must represent New Forest, an area with a voting population of no more than a dozen.  The political representation of New Forest residents must be amongst the most favoured in the whole of the UK when computed in terms of political representatives per elector!

New Forest’s other claim to fame is the tea garden at Helwith (see Facebook page), which serves first rate cheese scones and the best bacon sandwiches in the Marske area (and beyond!). It is open most of the time.

Return to History pages

1. Victoria County History (https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/yorks/north/vol1).  Various sections in North Riding, Volume 1, including parishes of Marske, Kirby Ravensworth and Arkengarthdale.  Accessed 2023.  Published 1914.[↩][↩][↩][↩][↩]
2. Domesday. www.opendomesday.org.  Website dedicated to Domesday Book, including maps and lists. Accessed 2023.[↩]
3. Wikipedia. Common land. Accessed 2023.[↩]
4. Wikipedia. Enclosure. Accessed 2023.[↩]
5. Local contributor 6:  Various conversations.  2023.[↩][↩][↩][↩]
6. Fieldhouse, R and Jennings, B. 1978. A History of Richmond and Swaledale. Page 367.[↩]
7. Darlington and Stockton Times.  6 November 2021.  The Swaledale mining relics standing in splendid isolation.[↩][↩][↩][↩][↩]
8. Yorkshire Gardens Trust. Webpages on Sedbury Hall. Accessed 2023[↩]
9. The National Archives IR29/42/265 and IR30/42/265. Tithe maps and apportionments for New Forest township. Also available through The Genealogist (subscription website).[↩][↩]
10. Custer, Nancy White. The White and March Families. North Yorkshire and White Oak Springs Wisconsin. Personal Website. Accessed 2023.[↩]
11. Custer, Nancy White. The White and March Families. North Yorkshire and White Oak Springs Wisconsin. Personal Website. Accessed 2023.[↩]
12. Morris, D.  1989.  The Dalesmen of the Mississippi River.[↩][↩]
13. Wikipedia. Galena, Illinois. Accessed 2024.[↩][↩]
14. Wikipedia. Ho-Chunk. Accessed 2024.[↩]
15. Morris, D.  1989.  The Dalesmen of the Mississippi River.[↩]
16. Local contributor 6:  Sales brochure relating to sales of farms in Arkengarthdale and New Forest dated 1930.  Viewed in 2023.[↩]
17. Wikipedia. Thomas Sopwith. Accessed 2023.[↩]
18. Companies House. UK government website. Accessed 2023[↩]
19. Wikipedia. New Forest, North Yorkshire. Accessed 2023.[↩]